I've been thinking recently about the "two Howard Deans" -- the screamer whose candidacy went up in righteous flames during 2004, and the soft-spoken, seemingly ineffectual Democratic Party leader who is presiding over one of the most confusing primary processes in American political history. Now, over at the Washington Post, Perry Bacon Jr has an interesting defense of Dean, calling him "prescient" on many of the issues that have come to define the Democratic Party, from strong opposition to the Iraq war, to railing against No Child Left Behind, to rejecting the third way "triangulation" of the Bill Clinton years.
As Bacon writes, Dean's key insight, though, is certainly his 50-state strategy, which Barack Obama's candidacy, with its focus on effectively organizing small caucus states, seems engineered to support. I'd only add that Obama's organizing gene predates Dean's influence on the party; it's less that Dean influenced Obama than that the two politicians have naturally congruous strategies. Last week, Obama announced an "organizing fellowship" for young people willing to devote six weeks this summer to his campaign. The program doesn't sound all that different from a traditional summer spent canvassing before an election, but by exalting it as a "fellowship," Obama is signaling a commitment to Dean's big-tent, grassroots, no-stone-left-unturned vision for the Democratic Party.
--Dana Goldstein
